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RIYADH: Winners of the fourth Industrial Hackathon will gain access to a special program that helps turn their ideas into reality through implementation by Saudi factories for potential investment returns, revealed a senior minister. 

In an interview with Al-Eqtisadiah, Minister of Industry and Mineral Resources and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Saudi Industrial Development Fund Bandar Alkhorayef emphasized the importance of supporting young innovators and following up on their projects. 

The camp featured 229 contestants representing 60 teams across four main tracks: design, production, sustainability, and automation — the latter newly introduced for this edition. 

According to a statement, total prize money exceeded SR1.7 million ($450,000), distributed among the top three entries in each of the four challenge tracks: Design, Production, Sustainability, and Automation. 

The winners in each track received SR120,000, second-place teams were awarded SR80,000, and those in third-place got SR60,000, recognizing their creative efforts and innovative contributions across diverse industrial fields. 

He noted that the initiative’s partners from companies and factories play a key role in helping these entrepreneurs develop their ideas, expressing hope that some will become industrialists in the near future. 

This initiative aligns with the hackathon’s broader goal of harnessing the creative potential of citizens and residents to develop innovative solutions to challenges faced by national factories, in support of SIDF’s strategy to foster innovation and industrial development. 

It also reflects the fund’s long-term contribution to the Kingdom’s industrial growth. Over the past 50 years, SIDF has extended loans worth more than SR180 billion to various projects, according to figures released in 2024 to mark its half-century milestone. 

“The Minister of Industry honored the winners of the fourth edition of the Industrial Hackathon training camp, organized by the SIDF. It aims to enable participants to develop their ideas and transform them into innovative industrial solutions, reflecting the Kingdom’s ambitions to support innovation and the industrial sector,” Al-Eqtisadiah reported. 

The event also included hands-on learning components such as the “Fabrication Lab,” where participants could experiment with ideas and build prototypes, and the “Ideas Factory,” a collaborative space for problem-solving and experience sharing. Workshops and enrichment sessions further enhanced participants’ innovation and teamwork skills. 

The Industrial Hackathon is organized in partnership with Riyad Bank, Sipchem, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, and King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology, with platinum sponsorship from Ma’aden. 

Established in 1974, SIDF serves as the Kingdom’s main enabler of industrial development. Over the past five decades, it has provided innovative financial and advisory solutions that have supported ��������’s sustainable industrial transformation

KUALA LUMPUR: US President Donald Trump and Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim signed a trade agreement on Sunday, boosting US access to critical minerals as China tightens controls on rare earths.

Beijing this month announced sweeping restrictions on the rare earths industry, prompting Trump to threaten 100 percent tariffs on imports from China in retaliation.

Trump is in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur at the Association of South East Asian Nations summit, ahead of a meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Thursday.

Under the new US-Malaysia deal, Kuala Lumpur pledged to “refrain from banning or imposing quotas on exports to the US of critical minerals,” while Washington agreed the formalization of a 19 percent tariff on Malaysian goods.

“Malaysia has committed to ensure no restrictions are imposed on the sale of rare earth magnets to US companies,” the White House said in a joint statement.

Malaysia also vowed to speed up development of its critical minerals sector in partnership with US firms, including extending operating licenses to boost production capacity.

US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said the deal would make investment and trade in critical minerals “as free as possible and as resilient as possible.”

“We live in a world where having these critical minerals is important to our manufacturing, to our technology and to our economy,” Greer said at the signing.

“It’s very important that we cooperate as willing partners with each other to ensure that we can have smooth supply chains.”

Malaysia said in 2023 that it holds around 16.2 million tonnes of untapped rare earth reserves.

A nationwide moratorium on raw rare earth exports took effect on Jan. 1, 2024, aiming to encourage domestic processing.

At the height of a US-China trade dispute in 2019, Chinese state media suggested that rare earth exports to the US could be cut in retaliation -- sparking fear among manufacturers.

In 2010, Japan experienced the pain of a cut-off when China halted rare earth exports over a territorial conflict.

Since then, Tokyo has pushed hard to diversify supplies, signing deals with the Australian group Lynas for production from Malaysia, and ramping up its recycling capabilities.